In the production of garments in an industrial setting in which batches of garment parts are delivered to work stations where the garment parts are connected together, it is important that the equipment provided to the worker be fast and efficient in its operation, but also it is important that the garment parts can be expediently loaded on the equipment. Further, it is highly desirable that once the garment parts have been loaded in position and the equipment is placed in operation that the worker be able to momentarily leave the equipment while the equipment continues to operate. This enables the worker to operate more than one machine and to gather more garment parts and match them together for presentation to another duplicate machine for its next cycle of operation.
In the production of stretchable garments, such as sweat suits having a shirt body made of fleece and a waist band of stretchable knit material, it is sometimes difficult for the worker or the equipment to accurately control the material as it is being fed to the sewing machine. For example, when the knitted waist band of a sweat suit is to be connected to the waist edge of the fleece shirt body, the more stretchable waist band may be of smaller breadth than the waist edge of the shirt body when both garments are relaxed. When the waist band and the waist edge of the shirt body are being guided to the sewing machine, the waist band usually must be stretched more than the waist edge of the shirt body in order that they are properly matched in breadth as they are sewn together. Further, the edge of the fleece material usually tends to curl as it is stretched, which requires the curled edges to be flattened before they are presented to the sewing needle of the sewing machine. Also, some of the waist bands are cut to improper widths or are cut with non-uniform widths which, when sewn to the shirt body, etc., ultimately causes the garment to be unaccepted.
Because of these inherent problems in presenting the stretchable waist band and shirt body or pants body materials to the sewing needles of the sewing machine and operating the equipment, the machine operator is required to develop a relatively high skill in presenting the work product to the sewing machine, and the presentation of the work product to the sewing machine requires substantially full attention of the operator during at least some of the cycle of operation of the sewing machine. This results in the operator not having enough time during the cycle of operation of the sewing machine to retrieve and assemble the next garment parts that are to be presented to the sewing machine or to operate two machines simultaneously.